A natural connection

Going from a school of around 100 students to one of around 1,500.

Going from the wide-open game of 8-man football, which they'd played all their lives, to 11-man football.

Going from the ways of life on the Indian reservation to the way it is off the reservation.

The adjustments have been many for senior Tucker Louie-McGee and his brother, junior Jerry Louie-McGee, who are in their third year of playing football and attending Lake City High after growing up in Worley, on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation.

But, so far, so good, they say.

"At Lakeside I was known as 'the quarterback,'" Tucker said. "Up here, it was like, 'Who is this kid?' I'd never played 11-man before so I never understood the concepts of it."

Tucker (6-foot-1, 168 pounds), in his first season as the starting quarterback, has passed for more than 1,100 yards and nine touchdowns, and rushed for seven more for Lake City (5-2), which plays host to city rival Coeur d'Alene (4-3) on Friday. Jerry (5-9, 156), in his second year at H-back, has caught six TD passes, ran for seven more, and returned one punt for a score this season.

Some of their best touchdowns seem to come on broken plays - a pass play where the protection breaks down and the quarterback scrambles, or a running play that involves a reversal of field or two. Or a little of both.

"I feel like it's competitiveness," Tucker said of making something out of seemingly nothing. "You don't want to give up yards, you're fighting for as much yards as you can, and you end up breaking it ... it's just wanting to get those extra yards that some people wouldn't want to get."

Lake City football coach Van Troxel said those things can happen when players spend so much time together.

"My best friend in high school was one of my receivers," said Troxel, who played quarterback at Moscow High. "And whenever the play broke down, you have a connection. They (the Louie-McGee brothers) have a natural connection - they connect with each other, and if something goes haywire ... "

THIS STORY began some three years ago.

Wade McGee, who had been running a Bigger Faster Stronger program at the Coeur d'Alene Tribal Wellness Center in Plummer for years, called Troxel, who runs the weightroom at Lake City. They talked about weights, and football, and lifting.

"We established a relationship through our common interest in the weightroom," Troxel said. "I didn't even know Tucker and Jerry existed at that point."

By that time, Tucker had played football as a freshman at Lakeside High in Plummer. Jerry was an eighth-grader. Both had expressed interest in playing football in college, and Wade set out to find a place that would better help his sons get there.

"It was academics," Wade said. "Lakeside's academics didn't meet NCAA standards; they don't offer any language classes. We started going on a search where to take the kids. We (Wade and Van) already had the connection with the weight room, because his dad (Ed) was doing it way before BFS was. What convinced me was, he (Van) doesn't care if they're the best football player, what he cares is, do they grow up to be great men. When he said that to me, that's when I knew where I wanted to bring my kids."

Wade brought his boys up to Coeur d'Alene to observe what Troxel was doing with his weights classes. They liked what they saw.

"When we came up to visit, we felt like we were at home," Jerry said.

"It was like, this is the school we need to go to," Tucker added.

Still, leaving Lakeside, where they were emerging as stars of the football team, wasn't easy. With Tucker Louie-McGee as a freshman in 2010, he threw 16 touchdown passes as Lakeside went 6-3 - at the time its best season since 1997.

"I was on the fence about it," Tucker said of moving. "I was like, I don't want to move away from everything I've got here. But once we came up here ... I just really liked it once we moved up here. At first I didn't think it was going to be that good of an experience, but now that we're up here, I'm really glad we did it."

When they played 8-man in Plummer growing up, Tucker was the quarterback, Jerry the running back.

"When we were middle school we ran option, so I pitched it to him a lot," Tucker said. "The whole thing was to pitch the ball to Jerry, so we got it to him every time we could."

"You give it to the fast guy and let 'em go," Jerry said.

Tucker was a wide receiver and quarterback as a sophomore on the junior varsity team at Lake City, but quickly earned the starting QB job. Last year, he started at safety on the varsity, and was the backup quarterback.

Troxel said Tucker reminds him of former Lake City QBs Dustin Sedgwick and Ben Widmyer, both running/passing threats.

Tucker had to work at becoming a better passer, and he and Jerry have attended the Manning Passing Academy the past four years. Playing in a lot of 7-on-7 leagues and tournaments in recent years has also helped.

"In 8-man there's only two pass routes; in 11-man, there's five-man passing routes, four-man passing routes," Tucker said. "I was more the north-south runner of the two, and now that I've gotten more athletic, I can cut back more."

Troxel said Tucker fits Lake City's new spread offense nicely, but said he would have also been successful in the Timberwolves' old, under-the-center, veer offense.

Jerry, meanwhile, learned quickly that while zig-zagging from sideline to sideline worked in 8-man, it wasn't quite as effective in 11-man, with more, faster defenders - though it has still been successful a few times this season.

"That instinct that they brought from 8-man football has not hurt them a bit, because they play well in space," Troxel said.

No wonder, then, that Jerry's idol growing up was Barry Sanders, the shifty running back with Oklahoma State and later the Detroit Lions.

Troxel remembers Jerry playing on the freshman team at Lake City, "and all we see is a little rat out there, flying around," he said. "We tabbed him right away - this is the kind of guy we have to have at H-back (slotback), that can do multiple things."

Jerry is the faster of the two. Both got serious about their dad's Bigger Faster Stronger program about six years ago. Their speed also came from their dad as well as from the BFS program.

Wade McGee played at Oklahoma State, and later at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan. He is in his third year as an offensive assistant coach at Lake City.

Their mom, the former Debbie Louie, was a marine for 4 1/2 years.

WHEN THE boys first started at Lake City, Wade and Troxel talked often about the boys' Indian heritage. Wade is a member of the Cherokee tribe, Debbie a member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe.

"Their heritage is very, very important to them," Troxel said. "Being in this mix over two or three years, they've become so much more outgoing. They've grown immensely in being able to communicate and deal with the real world. Education was a big thing, but changing their environment was a big thing in helping them prepare for the real world."

"I was really nervous when I came up here," Tucker said. "I didn't really want to talk to the coaches. I was really nervous about that, I wanted my dad to talk to them. He told me I had to, to get relationships with them. I kind of had to break out of my own shell and talk to the coaches, and get to know them, and let them know how I feel about things."

"It's been great for them," Wade said of the move. "Tucker's a different kid. He was so quiet."

"He wouldn't look at you, he wouldn't say a word," Troxel recalled of Tucker. "And now he's a team captain, he's a team leader, he sets the tempo for everything we do. Jerry's just a ball of energy. He never stops moving... he (Wade) is lucky to get him to go to bed at night."

Both run track at Lake City. Tucker is a key reserve for the Timberwolf basketball team, where he takes great pleasure in hounding the other team's point guard. A third Louie-McGee boy, Kenny, is a freshman at Lake City.

Tucker and Jerry were asked which trait of the other they wish they had.

"I wish I had his football awareness and his quickness," Tucker said of Jerry, "just to be able to find spots on the football field to get to, because I'm not really good with the whole cutback thing. So I just wish I had his football (awareness) of where everyone on the field is - and his quickness."

"I want his explosion," Jerry said of Tucker. "When he's running, all of a sudden ... he puts the jets on and he's flying. And I wish I could throw the ball too," he said with a laugh.

Both hope to play in college. Tucker, who said his first idol was Jim Thorpe, the great Native American athlete in the early 1900s, said he has attracted interest from Eastern Washington (he took an unofficial visit there last weekend), as well as Idaho State and some other smaller schools in the region.

Wade McGee said he had no concerns moving his sons out of their comfort zone on the reservation to the big unknown of Coeur d'Alene.

"No. 1 is, they're competitive," he said. "No. 2, they love to work hard. And they love to win. And they know it takes hard work. ... I was just praying one day, I said I need to know what to do with my kids, because 8-man football doesn't get a lot of looks from colleges. The kids kept telling me, 'Dad, I really want to play college football.' Debbie and I started praying and asked God to show us.

"The main thing was, we wanted to keep the culture intact, but at the same time we wanted to experience life beyond the reservation," Wade added. "I wanted them to experience this so when they go to college, it's a lot easier (transition) ... so they're more apt to succeed."